


Well... That's New

by almaasi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Accidental Dating, Aziraphale has 5000 eyes and they’re all heart-eyes, Crowley is fuelled by keysmash and coffee and just needs to sleep, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, I mean we always assume Crowley fell in love at “yOU WHAt” but what if he didn’t KNOW it??, Illustrated, M/M, Oblivious Crowley, Other, Romance, Valentine’s Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22123117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almaasi/pseuds/almaasi
Summary: It’s 2020. Crowley has not yet realised he’s in love with Aziraphale, despite loving him for 6023 years. The Valentine’s Day card he gives his angel is for Best Friendship. Treating him to a fancy dinner is just The Done Thing. The long night-time walk along the promenade, holding hands, soon followed by a kiss... is... uhhh...? Well, that’s new.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 63
Kudos: 622





	Well... That's New

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not _actually_ inspired by [this tumblr post](https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/190055823010) by @wheeloffortune-design, given I wrote this fic about a week or so before I saw the post, but it’s too damn relevant not to link.
> 
> Beta’d by [Katie](https://crab-full-of-rocks.tumblr.com/) and [Amara](https://sweetdreamspootypie.tumblr.com/).

What this card needed, Crowley decided, was a lipstick kiss.

Once February came around, everything featured lipstick kisses. Shop windows, magazine covers, the menu board at the coffee house where Crowley had spent his morning basking under the glowing outdoor heater, slumping in multiple directions, pretending not to be teetering on the edge of sleep.

With veins simmering with levels of caffeine that would have been fatal to a lesser creature, Crowley trudged back to Aziraphale’s bookshop, card in both hands. He stared at it thoughtfully as he went.

“Hey there, angel,” he drawled, sauntering past Aziraphale in a shadowy aisle between bookshelves. “Dinner out later?”

Aziraphale looked up from unshelving the volumes he wished people would stop touching. “Tonight? Oh.” He cooed a little. “Alright, Crowley. Dinner _tonight_! That sounds... splendid.” He glanced along the aisle, then leaned around the corner, peering after Crowley. “Crowley? Where are you going?”

“Hm? Oh.” Crowley faced him and hid the card behind his back. “Just. Things! Important things. Doing them.”

“I see.” Aziraphale sounded suspicious. He probably _did_ see, to be fair. Being an angel, he had eyes where humans would be horrified to imagine eyes, and he perceived a lot more about the surrounding space and time than whatever was in front of him. Yet he didn’t ask why Crowley retreated in slow motion, walking backwards, wearing an innocent smile. “Come back quickly, please, then,” he called after Crowley, his voice echoing through the marble atrium. “I need to know where we’re going so I know what to wear!”

Crowley bent and dug into the black-leather travel bag he kept under one of Aziraphale’s shadow boxes. He called back, “Angel, you always wear the same thing. Just wear that.”

Aziraphale’s voice drifted airily through the open space, “ _But tonight’s special!_ ”

Crowley straightened up, frowning. To himself, he wondered, “Is it?” He arched his lips in a shrug and rummaged through his bag again. He pulled out a tube of bright red lipstick, and crouched slightly to use the glass in the shadow box as a mirror.

He was just neatening up the edges of his mouth when he heard the tap-tap of Aziraphale’s shoes. Head swung right, Crowley startled as he saw Aziraphale in profile standing ten feet away, hands clasped on his plump middle, head cocked to give Crowley an interested look.

Aziraphale smiled. “Quite right, too,” he said with a firm nod. Then he hesitated, and said, “Not to be a pest about it, dear, but I think that shade is a tad too bright for you. Perhaps something more... raspberry-toned?”

Crowley looked at the lipstick, and supposed it was a bit... visually hostile. He glanced back to Aziraphale, but he’d pottered off, humming a happy tune.

Crowley smiled, and the lipstick darkened to a rich ruby-red, luscious and glossy.

  
∞  


“Goodness.” Aziraphale held his own hands, looking around in surprise. “Is _is_ crowded tonight, isn’t it? You must’ve booked well in advance to get a table on a night like this.”

They’d come to a charming little restaurant in the heart of London, not too far from the River Thames. It was the sort of restaurant with private booths and plush crimson carpets – and a hundred other people eager to dine in style.

“Book?” Crowley hadn’t reserved a table at restaurant, ever, in his life. “Right. Yes. Book.” One side of his lips drew upward. He cleared his throat, scratched the back of his neck and turned away, and clicked his fingers where nobody would see.

“Oh, look!” Aziraphale took Crowley’s arm in a soft grip. “There’s us. The waitress is beckoning. Come along, my dear.”

The waitress showed them to their booth, and they each tried to gesture the other to sit down first, but in the end, both sat down together, on opposite sides of the round white table. Crowley was uncomfortable there, so scooched around the padded crescent bench until he sat inches from Aziraphale, then stretched his legs out onto the ribbed red suede.

“You know,” Aziraphale said conversationally, picking up his menu and looking at it, “I _did_ think you were going to wear the lipstick when we came out tonight.”

Crowley lifted his head. “Hm? What for?”

Aziraphale fiddled with his shiny new turquoise bowtie, offering a plain smile. “Well. Special occasion, isn’t it? Seems fitting to dress up for a date.”

Crowley blinked a few times behind his sunglasses. He didn’t see what made dining together here and now any more of a date than usual. Everyone else in the restaurant seemed to be dining with their best friends too, and they looked very happy. “Eh,” Crowley said carelessly, flipping his menu and studying it. “I tried the colour on for a minute, that’s all.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale put on a smile. “That’s certainly valid. Either way, I like the sequin jacket. It’s very... _you_.”

Indeed it was, as it was the same black pointy-lapelled jacket Crowley had worn for a decade, temporarily bedazzled until every part but the rouge lapels glittered with each moment he made. “You said it was a special occasion, angel. Just... making an effort.”

Aziraphale’s smile grew, his eyes shiny. “Yes, I can see that.”

They ummed and ahhed about their dinner orders for some time, then Aziraphale lifted a hand and summoned their waitress back. With his usual dewy-eyed sweetness, he ordered a crumbed venison kiev and a side salad, with all the dressings and sauteed root vegetables it was possible to fit onto the same plate. Better yet, he’d like a bigger plate. Crowley pursed his lips, ordered the chef’s special and the fanciest bottle of wine on the premises, and handed over both menus with a twist of his wrist.

While they waited, Crowley set a cheek in a hand, kicked his foot impatiently under the table, plucking a lump into the linen tablecloth with a finger and thumb. Aziraphale patted his hand to make him stop, and Crowley sneered, instead taking his knife tip and spinning twists into the same threads.

“They’ll have us thrown out, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, with no small amount of fondness. “Leave the table alone, you silly thing.”

Crowley hummed, slinking his hands under his thighs and sitting on them to keep them still. However, he felt the flatness of his greeting card in his back pocket, and sucked in a happy breath. “Oh!” He pulled out the card triumphantly. “Almost forgot, angel. Here. This is for you.”

Aziraphale took the card with astonished reverence, which became a soft-browed, trembly-lipped smile as he saw the drawings of dashing corvids and dancing white doves decorating the front. Between the birds hung a red banner that read, in Crowley’s choppy handwriting, _Best Friends For Eternity_. The birds held the banner in their beaks, and they looked a bit worried about it, because Crowley hadn’t taken any art classes since Mr. Da Vinci banned him, and the ensuing half-millennia doing little more than doodling had rendered him somewhat out of practise.

“Oh, _Crow_ ley, it’s wonderful,” Aziraphale gushed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think to make you anyth—”

He’d opened the card, and his breath hitched.

There was the lipstick kiss, in lieu of a thousand words. Crowley smiled in contentment, enjoying how perfectly it had come out on his first try. It looked just like all the cardboard kisses dangling from the ceiling on strings in department stores, and gleaming on the front of newly-released novels. People were so obsessed with lipstick in February.

Aziraphale touched his heart, a squeak of delight emerging from him. He looked at Crowley like he was about to melt. “Crowley,” he whispered. “Oh, you’ve taken my breath away.”

Crowley tensed all over in pleasure, then sank forward, chin on the heel of his hand. He beamed.

Aziraphale made a series of warm, appreciative noises, muttering about the detail on the birds’ wings and the amount of _care_ and _dedication_ that had to have gone into this craft. “Thank you, my dear,” he said in the end, his eyes just dazzling with stars. “Thank you so very much. Especially for the message inside.”

“Welcome, angel,” Crowley mumbled, with his heart all gooey. He might have been blushing, but who was to say? All of him felt curiously hot and glowy, so extra heat in his cheeks and ears could’ve meant anything.

  
∞  


Dinner, like all dinners with Aziraphale, stretched out beautifully over several hours, each course taken apart and appreciated to its utmost, each bite savoured, seasoned most exquisitely with conversation. Crowley thrived on the sound of Aziraphale’s voice, and those adorable quirks of his: the two-handed lip-patting with his napkin, the way he put his fork down tines-first between bites, the way he gave food a little shimmy on his fork before putting it all into his mouth.

Crowley never much cared _what_ they talked about, so long as they talked. Much of the time, Aziraphale talked, and Crowley listened, and he liked that too. Many of his favourite meals in their six-thousand years had concluded with Aziraphale talking and Crowley falling asleep where he sat, only to wake up draped in a blanket. The angel’s tales were never boring, but his melodic voice was the sweetest of lullabies.

There was no danger of falling asleep tonight, however, as their waitress came and took away their four empty bottles of wine, told them the restaurant was closing, and could they please, if it’s not too much trouble, leave.

Aziraphale checked his pocket watch, then cried out, “Good Heavens! Past midnight already!”

They hastily gathered themselves up and paid their dues, Aziraphale with a signature on a cheque, Crowley with a handshake for their waitress and a hundred-pound note pressed to her palm.

Stepping out together into the cold expanse of the London night, they shared a look of embarrassment while neatening up their jackets. It wasn’t the first time they’d overstayed their welcome, but it was the first time Crowley had been completely unaware that the other booths sat empty, tablecloths gone, chairs stacked atop the tables. A woman with a vacuum cleaner had come past, and Crowley had just watched her vacuuming, not thinking it strange. Aziraphale had been talking about the overlock function on modern sewing machines and Crowley had never heard of anything more fascinating.

“Home then?” Aziraphale asked.

“So soon?” Crowley joked. He sniffed in a breath that shocked his insides. “Still early.”

Aziraphale hummed agreement, turning a longing look towards the River Thames, where lampposts edged the promenade, a short wall hiding the lights on the decorated riverboats. “Let’s take a walk, then,” he said. He held out his hand to Crowley. “Just between us, I don’t really want tonight to end, either.”

There was something so tender in the way he said those words. Crowley wasn’t sure what to make of it.

He put his hands in his pockets and strode on, chin down.

After a moment, Aziraphale trotted after him, hands clutched at his middle. “You don’t want to hold hands?”

Crowley looked at him. “Pardon?”

Aziraphale offered a palm again, fingers wriggling. “Awfully nippy out. Couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Confused but interested, Crowley pried his right hand from his own pocket and set it in Aziraphale’s left. Palms pressed; fingers spread; Aziraphale slipped his fingers between Crowley’s, and they latched together and held tight. Aziraphale wore a bright little smile, walking towards the riverside with a twinkle in his eyes.

Crowley’s heart was jamming some kind of bongo. He hadn’t felt a rhythm so upbeat in quite some time. What _was_ this? What was _this_? Since when did Aziraphale hold his hand when he wasn’t scared? He didn’t look scared. He looked happy. Why was he happy and holding Crowley’s hand? It didn’t make sense.

“Angel – what’s wrong?” Crowley asked, in case there was a secret thing to be scared about.

“Wrong?” Aziraphale turned his glistening eyes to Crowley, his face dappled with rainbow lights from the trees they passed. “Nothing’s wrong, Crowley. Not one thing. Why do you ask?”

“Oh... just... checking,” Crowley said.

“Well, rest assured,” Aziraphale said warmly, “I don’t have the slightest complaint. Marvellous night, isn’t it,” he added, before inhaling a huge breath. “Ohhh. Look how they’ve done up the trees! Isn’t that lovely. You’d think it was still Christmas.”

Crowley halfway took in the sight of the lit-up trees in their square planters, vaguely nodding and humming an agreeable note. They’d come to the promenade beside the Thames, where the wide-paved walkway was clear but for a few sets of friends here and there, women hanging on their fellows’ arms, some dancing together in huffs of vapoured breath beside a busker with no nose, who gamboled fiercely with a violin.

“Let’s head this way,” Aziraphale decided, easing Crowley towards London Bridge. “Not so many people this way.”

As they strolled at a gentle pace, the sound of the violin stretched softly, becoming a distant squeak whenever the breeze didn’t tease it away. The sounds of sirens and car horns and drunken celebrations blended into the soft ambience of the river lapping at its gravel banks, close enough that Crowley saw the stars and golden city lights reflected in its shimmer.

Aziraphale walked so closely, and kept on casting appreciative looks towards Crowley. “I’ve been waiting a long time for tonight, actually,” he said, in the tone of a confession. “I, um.” He gulped. “I’m glad you... finally... said something. Even if you didn’t say it aloud.”

Crowley eyed him blankly. “You are?”

“Oh, terribly glad; yes.”

Aziraphale had never looked so... sparkly. If it weren’t for the bulbous lamplights they passed, and the draped Ws of string lights hung between them, Crowley might have thought the angel himself was luminescent with joy.

Aziraphale spoke with utter reverence, almost pleading as he said, “Oh, my dear... I know you waited so long for me. You’ve been so, _so_ patient.” He chuckled a tiny laugh, adding, “These last few years, though, I’ve never been quite sure, not quite _ready_ — Oh, I don’t need to explain, do I? You know.”

“I do?” Crowley asked himself, staring forward. “What... What was it?” He glanced at Aziraphale. “What were you waiting for, exactly, angel?”

Aziraphale gave such a darling smile at that. He paused their walk, turning to face Crowley and taking his other hand. They were illuminated between two lampposts, just enough shadow around them that Crowley felt safe; just enough light that he saw the tears in Aziraphale’s waterline.

“This,” Aziraphale said, hands sliding up Crowley’s wrists, up his biceps, taking his neck. His hands were overwhelmingly warm, and gave so much assurance and comfort Crowley could have slept where he was standing, despite his utter perplexion about their conversation. True, he didn’t have any preference as to the topic, but he did, broadly speaking, quite like to know what was going on.

“I love you,” Aziraphale whispered, like the words were the antidote to a poison he’d never admit he’d swallowed. “Crowley, I love you with my whole, entire heart and soul.”

Crowley relaxed. “Oh, that.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale frowned. “What do you mean ‘oh, that’?”

“No offence, angel, but, um – you’ve been a bit obvious.” Crowley smirked, shrugging a shoulder. “Anyone would’ve seen it. I figured you’d get over that nonsense eventually.”

“Get ov— Get? Over?” It seemed a testament to Aziraphale’s love that he kept his hands where they were, hugging the back of Crowley’s neck. “Crowley, don’t be silly, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Clearly.” Crowley pursed his lips and cocked his head. “Couldn’t get rid of you if I tried.”

Aziraphale sighed fondly, shaking his head. “If you wanted to, you mean. And you wouldn’t.”

Crowley hummed jokily, supposing that was true. He lowered his eyes and chin and head, wondering why he felt all tingly inside. It all started when Aziraphale took his hand, and it was just getting worse. Crowley had never once taken ill, but he wondered if he was coming down with something. A fever had presented itself a moment ago and didn’t seem to be abating.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed. “Thank you for the Valentine card. And for the night out. I’ve really, really enjoyed our little date tonight. This _was_ incredibly special. Even if we did send all the restaurant staff home late.”

Crowley searched Aziraphale’s eyes. “Card.” His heart did a backflip and started to experiment with reggae. “Date.” His fingertips and the soles of his feet began to prickle. “V... Valen...tihh...nhhh...”

“It really was beautifully made,” Aziraphale said, a squishiness to his voice as he snuggled a bit closer, his face mere inches from Crowley’s now. They shared breath, breath they didn’t need, and it glittered gold before it dissipated between their chins.

“It’s... Valentine’s Day,” Crowley said, as the caffeine-vs-alcohol-vs-melatonin battle finally announced caffeine the winner. “Humans. Celebrate. Romance. W-w-with their. Partners.”

“And I think we did it splendidly,” Aziraphale agreed. “Of course there’s one more thing, if you wouldn’t object, that I think we could try.” He bit his lip in a flustered grin, eyes on Crowley’s half-slack mouth. “Oh, maybe it’s too forward. Six-thousand years go by and you do start to wonder how fast is too fast.”

Crowley felt especially dopey, but spikes of understanding were starting to zap at him. “Not too fast,” he said, so quietly he only just felt his own voice bob in his throat. “No such thing as too fast, angel. Not on... Valentine’s Day.”

Delight sparked in Aziraphale’s gaze. “In that case... might I kiss you?”

Crowley shrugged. He could accept a kiss, sure. It was the gesture of the season, he knew as much from the novel covers and shop windows and the lipstick smooch he himself had put into his Best Friendship card. He liked making Aziraphale happy, and trying human things, and if sharing a kiss to end a nice night was what Aziraphale wanted to try, that was fine. “No objections.”

“Aw.” Aziraphale’s hands cuddled up around Crowley’s face, holding him, stroking his sideburns with his thumbs. “Are you certain? This’ll be our first kiss.”

Crowley’s heart had invented dubstep.

“First?” Crowley whispered. He held Aziraphale’s eyes – left, then right – wondering, of all things, why the angel would say that. He made it sound like there’d be more than one kiss. A second one. A third. A five-hundred-thousandth, eternity permitting.

Aziraphale had taken Crowley’s whisper as agreement, as he now shut his eyes delicately, and turned his head just a touch...

Lips touched.

Aziraphale’s mouth was softer and warmer than Crowley ever thought possible.

Crowley’s eyes fell shut and his body erupted in tingles, head to toe, to the tip of either invisible wing. A moan of shock burst into Aziraphale’s mouth, and, invigorated by the vocal response, Aziraphale grasped Crowley harder, head tilting more as he blasted hot air down Crowley’s cheek. A drone of contentment passed between them in a vibration, low and buzzing.

Crowley slipped into a weightless abyss as Aziraphale’s pressure left him. Now his chin and rapidly-shredding soul were supported only by Aziraphale’s steady hands cupping his face. After some dizzied wavering, Crowley’s eyes met a pair of sure and happy stars.

“Hgnghhfjfnhsh,” Crowley said.

“Oh, quite,” Aziraphale agreed, a little short of breath. His mouth was plump and shiny and flushed around his lips, and there was definitely a glow about his whole person. He’d never looked so astonishingly beautiful. The sight of this ruffled-up bowtied angel post-kiss was just about the most remarkable vision Crowley had ever been graced with, including the exact instant of his conception when he was pretty sure he saw God smile.

Crowley didn’t get it. He stared, his waist now held in Aziraphale’s hands, and thought about it all very hard, very quickly.

People tried new things with their best friends all the time. Everyone at the restaurant tonight had a best friend to dine with. All the people on the covers of those lipstick-marked books had a best friend, whom they appeared as devoted to as Crowley was to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale seemed to enjoy their first kiss. Because despite all reasons to avoid doing so, he insisted on liking Crowley. Loving him, in fact.

Because they were best friends.

And Crowley had given him a Best Friends Valentine card.

Because they were _best friends forever_. In the most literal sense of ‘forever’.

So, why on Earth, or in all the realms of Heaven, Hell, and the mess of pure madness in between, was Crowley so _completely undone_ by something as innocent as a Best Friend First Kiss? Didn’t make sense. Not a lick.

Maybe if... he repeated the experiment...

Crowley shut his eyes and kissed Aziraphale again, fingers sinking into soft hair, breathing in deeply as Aziraphale sighed. They nuzzled and rolled their noses together, lips sticking and unsticking. Crowley let out a whimper completely against his will, and had to drop back, shocked at himself. He’d never known his nerves could _register_ this amount of tingling and not have it hurt.

His heart, his poor heart. The modern world wasn’t ready for this kind of percussion. Maybe in a hundred years.

“Hhhhhhgfh.”

Aziraphale laughed, stroking Crowley’s cheek with the back of his fingers. “Are you feeling all right, my dear? You look a bit...”

A bit like he’d just realised he loved his best friend a bit differently and rather more desperately than he thought? And had gone six-thousand and twenty-four years being entirely unaware of it? All the while just thinking he liked his angelic companion a mere _smidgen_ too much...?

Yeah.

Yeah, no wonder he looked Like That. Whatever _That_ looked like.

“Feel great, angel,” Crowley promised, pretending he wasn’t a weak breeze away from plopping down onto the stone slabs and lying there in shock until dawn. “Feel... eh-h-everything.”

He collapsed into Aziraphale’s shoulder and sobbed, clawing at his overcoat, whole body shaking. Aziraphale held him and cooed, nuzzling against Crowley’s hair.

“It’s alright, my darling,” Aziraphale said, the soothing tune of his voice pressed physically to Crowley’s chest. “Perhaps there is such a thing as too fast, even for a _speed_ demon like you.”

“I-I-It’s not that. It’s not thhh...”

More shivering and lapel-grabbing and deep, careful breaths.

Crowley stepped back after a minute, wiping a surprised set of teardrops from his cheeks. “Angel,” he rasped, through a voice all thick and emotional, “when the Hell did I fall in _love_ with you?”

Aziraphale held his waist. “ _When?_ ”

“When.”

A wrinkle pinched between Aziraphale’s brows. “I...? I’m not sure I understand. Haven’t you... _always_... been...?”

Crowley opened his mouth wide, affronted that Aziraphale could dare make such a claim. “You mean since Eden? _Eden_ , angel—”

But then his brain went ‘oh’ and he closed his mouth. Then opened it again. “Oh.”

He had a lot to think about. Might take a few weeks.

“Need a drink,” he said, waving a hand until it met Aziraphale’s coat, and he grasped it. “Alcohol with coffee in it. Coffee with more coffee. And alcohol. And _sugar_.”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps, my dear, you might try... sleeping.”

“Sleeping? _Sleeping_? Angel, if you think I’m going to go and _sleep_ after all this, you’re—” He twinged from the inside out, then yawned. “Absolutely... rhghh.”

Aziraphale took his hand and started to lead him back the way they’d come. “Nothing a good nap can’t fix. For a moment there, Crowley, you almost had me thinking _I’ve_ been waiting all this time for _you_. How preposterous _that_ would be!”

Preposterous indeed.

“Kiss.” Crowley stopped, trembling. “Please.”

Aziraphale smirked. “One more?”

“Three more.”

They were soft, chaste little kisses, applied one after the other to Crowley’s left cheek, right cheek, then the tip of his nose. How peculiar that a collection of touches so _slight_ up here could result in curled toes all the way down there. “Hmm.”

“Satisfied?”

Crowley tried not to smile, but snickered and grinned a wonky grin. “Mm-hm.”

Hand-in-hand, they strolled by the riverbank and shone in the lights, and shone from within. Absolutely glowing.

“F-F-Feels all new, angel,” Crowley said dazedly. “But... ‘s not all new, is it? It’s about as not-new as a thing can be.”

Holding his hand tighter, Aziraphale reached to rub Crowley’s arm assuredly with the other. “Do you know, I’m almost afraid to ask... but, Crowley—? Why _did_ you give me a card with a kiss inside it?”

“That’s... what people do. In February.”

“February fourteenth?”

Crowley hurried to count out the dates on his fingers, then huffed. “Thought it was the twelfth.”

Aziraphale’s smile faltered. Shaking his head with a now-worried look on his face, he remarked, “Best friends for all eternity, you said. Is that... what you meant? Friends?”

“Obviously.”

“But...”

Crowley lifted their joined hands and kissed Aziraphale’s knuckles. “Bes-bes-best friends,” he mumbled, lips to skin. Their hands swung low again. “F’rever ‘n ever.”

Aziraphale beamed. “Eternity wouldn’t be as good otherwise, would it?”

“Not worth the trouble,” Crowley said.

He pondered, realising he ought to say something properly reassuring, both for himself and for Aziraphale. He gathered up the courage with a few shaky breaths, then said, with all the tenderness he could muster: “Angel... You... You give me something to wake up for. And,” he smiled, heart squeezing, “something beautiful to listen to. And... And a reason to wait. For however long I need to wait; you make it easy.”

Judging by the way Aziraphale looked back at Crowley, he felt exactly the same.

On they walked, headed home for a nap, and maybe a marshmallow-topped hot cocoa along the way. Each excited glance they exchanged felt new now, _re_ newed; but even in the same look, they saw the age of what they had, and it was more ancient than the air they breathed and the earth they stepped on.

For two beings who existed largely removed from the concept of time and substance, love ceased to be an emotion, or something to be aware of, and just became their state of being.

They were not _in_ love.

They _were_ love.

Are love.

Will be love, forever.

And all the while, Crowley’s heart drummed away however it pleased, and Aziraphale gave him a melody to match. If one kiss was a hum and a spark, their marriage was a symphony of stars.

**{ the end }**

**Author's Note:**

> ★ [reblog the art!!](https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/190069812770/its-2020-crowley-has-not-yet-realised-hes-in)  
> ★ [reblog opening lines](https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/190069879885/well-thats-new)
> 
> Some facts and headcanons:  
> 1\. When I was a kid and I lived in London (14 years ago now) I once saw a person who busked with a violin around this central area, who had no nose, just a skeleton. That’s the person I imagine playing violin here, combined with [this majestic master](https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/189920408007/rettaroo-babydollbucky-thegreynightsky).  
> 2\. Da Vinci kicked Crowley out of his art class after Crowley decided the scale model of the trebuchet would be better if it fired snakes, then tried to prove he was right. Indoors. At dinnertime.  
> 3\. Meals with Aziraphale have never been booked, and the people who actually had restaurant reservations have been miraculously discovering fancy microwavable TV dinners in their fridges. (And, in pre-microwave eras, were invited to tea by the neighbours. TV really changed things. Crowley thinks the microwave dinners are better.)  
> 4\. Having deemed it irrelevant to his interests, Crowley has never paid any personal attention to Valentines Day, despite its extremely long history. He does, however, pay close attention to lipstick.  
> 5\. Crowley does not have a current calendar. He has one from 1963 that he keeps because it has an advert for pair of sunglasses he’s still meaning to try. (The company that sells them went bankrupt in 1964.)  
> 6\. Despite inventing it, Crowley never liked dubstep (which was precisely the point). But after that first kiss he _relates_ to it. You know, deep in his overwhelmed little heart.
> 
> If you liked this fic you’ll no doubt enjoy [**‘Husband’ Has a Nice Ring to It**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716397) (6k), and maybe [**This Desert Rose**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20559284) (8k), and [**a bunch of these other silly things**](https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/189948876640/3-million-words-fic-rec-crowleyaziraphale). c:
> 
> Thank you so much for reading~! I love writing and illustrating with my whole entire being, so it’s always wildly exciting to share what I made with people who appreciate it. ♥  
> Elmie x


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